Monday, March 14, 2016

Well hello. This week has also been great. We continued to apply what we learned at MLC which was to act like we know nothing and we had an extremely good week as far as Key Indicators go. In fact Sunday was the first day on my mission that we met all of our daily key indicator goals. We had a lot of fun doing what we learned. I think the one that had the biggest impact on me was the principle of asking everyone "who do you know who would be interested in and benefit from this message" and that's yielded a lot of fruit, it's fun asking people on the street that question and many of them refer their neighbors to us. Another principle is that when we visit media referrals to knock on their neighbors doors. Oftentime the person who requested X item on any church website will frequently change their mind but we're to have faith that we were put in that neighborhood for a reason and it's panned out! We had a media referral that we had contacted already but we went back to the neighborhood we found a family! Only two people in the family speak english and the rest speak kinyarwanda.... You've probably never heard of it. It's from Ruwanda. Well they're a wonderful family and I think every time we go over we'll be graciously accepted into their home but unfortunately we don't know how much we can help them since we really can't communicate and the church has nothing translated into their language. But we found a family!

I can't say I have too many experiences to share this week but I think this has been one of the best weeks of the mission. We tried really hard to do everything right. We looked at Preach My Gospel many times because we realized a lot of what we did was cultural or habit and not really the best way to do things. It's been helpful.

On Saturday Barry was baptized into the fold of God. I don't know if you remember him but I taught him in Oxford. He was so great and he really digested each step of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He had lots of Faith so that was easy and he had lots to Repent of, but that's why we have the atonement and now he's been baptized and has been confirmed a member of the church. I have complete faith that he will successfully endure to the end as well. I was planning on going and I had permission to go but on the day of his baptism I received a distinct impression not to go. It was odd but I was reassured that if I went I would regret it. I tried to work really hard that day to find the miracle God had instore for me but I don't know if that's why he had me stay. We had an awesome day and that's when we found the family but I never felt a confirmation that some event that occurred on Saturday was the reason I didn't go to the baptism. I don't know why I stayed except the Spirit told me to and I pray I'll be able to recognize why someday.

I'll send pictures of the baptism next week

Thank you to everyone who sent me birthday wishes and/or stuff. I really do appreciate it.

Sunday, March 6, 2016

Well this week was very good for me, it was an extremely difficult yet positive week. As far as numbers go our week didn't go to well but as Preach My Gospel says success is measured by our willingness to serve the Lord and we certainly had that. We talked with a lot of people but most of them weren't interested, actually out of all the people we were asked to visit none of them were interested. Thankfully at one of our last visits we saw an advertisement for an old lady who makes alterations on clothing and we wanted to see what she had to offer. Well she wasn't home but we knocked on her neighbors doors to see what they could tell us and we met a nice old lady named Ruth! She's 91 years old and her husband died when she was 54. I think she said 5 times during our ten minute conversation with her that she was ready to see her husband again and she wanted to hurry up and finish what God wanted her to do so she could die. It was slightly humorous because she had a lot of spunk. Thankfully I was so desperate after all the doors being closed on us I said "Ruth we can teach you how to ensure that you'll be with your husband forever, when can we come by?" She responded well to that and we'll be seeing her this week.

On Thursday we had the director of Proselyting come to our mission which was super great. I felt like a new missionary again with all the new things I learned! And he only taught from Preach My Gospel. I realized how over time I had altered missionary work and there were many points that weren't in line with PMG so I set a goal to forget what I know and see what PMG has to say. It's been good. The director of proselyting said "if you want to teach a family, pray and ask God to help you find one" well we did and spent Saturday looking for the family. We visited a lot of people, knocked on a lot of doors and asked for many referrals! My door approach was "We prayed that we could teach a family today, do you have a family that we could teach?" I figured my honesty would allow the Holy Ghost to testify more completely. Well we found no family, I don't know why but we tried really hard and it was a really good learning experience. I hadn't felt so close to the Lord in a long time. I'm still praying for a family and we're even knocking on doors that have multiple cars in the driveway because we think there's a family at the house. I'm sure they'll turn up eventually. I'm hoping we'll have an ether 1:12 experience, that would be nice.

You can pray for the family too, that would be helpful

--

Elder Trevon Turley

I decided to rename Soup. He looked more like a Sriracha to me. He is having quite the adventures here in New England territory.

Sunday, February 28, 2016

Well this week was very good. We taught lots of people and found 3 three new investigators. They are Jared, Steve and Amanda. They're pretty great people and all of them are at various stages of their conversion.

Amanda is great and is totally on track to be baptized. She had requested a Bible online and we had been having a really hard time getting ahold of her. For about 4 weeks we had been trying to visit her and it had amounted to nothing. Her neighbors said she worked odd hours but they couldn't really tell us more. Well we found her on Thursday, literally. She was home and excited to meet us! We gave her a Bible and she told us about how she was intentionally raised without a spiritual background. She's a single adult mom with a three year old daughter and really wants to raise her in a good environment. So she started looking for a church. She couldn't find one that fit her needs but thankfully the church is true so it totally fit her needs perfectly and we invited her to come and have a tour of the church the next day which she accepted. After calling people for like 30 minutes we got sis. Marks to come with us. Crazy story, Amanda and Sis. Marks are both Nurses! and they know some of the same people, it could not have been better. The church tour only made things better for Amanda and she said she would come to church this Sunday. We told her we'd like to visit her on Saturday as well for like 15 minutes just to help her feel more comfortable at church but unfortunately she couldn't because of traffic and stuff but we texted her a lot. Come Sunday we walk out of Ward Council and there in the pews thirty minutes early is our friend Amanda and her daughter. Well her daughter wasn't there a lot she was running around sitting with ever other family that had kids her age meanwhile half the relief society was talking with Amanda, it was absolutely perfect.

Tonight we're going to dinner with the Hoods and Amanda is coming too! She has expressed that she really wants a church that would help her daughter and conveniently The Hoods have a 7 year old son and a 5 year old daughter and they're in charge of the family home evening lesson tonight so we're really excited to see how that turns out.

We had a mini missionary this week, his name was Drayton Troop he was cool

Also we went to a Thai restaurant and we were the only ones there, it was really funny and the food wasn't very good

We had a Zone Conference this week and it was super great. We have a new senior couple here named the Knechts. Apparently he was like the head of Institute over the state of Utah or something like that. Anyway he gave a training on receiving revelation through the book of Mormon and it was allstar. He read D&C 84:85 which says "neither take ye thought beforehand what ye shall say; but treasure up in your minds continually the words of life, and it shall be given you in the very hour that portion that shall be meted unto every man" He proceeded to talk about how as missionaries you don't always have to study what you're teaching for the day. It's important but the promise is that when you read you are able to "treasure up the words" then when it comes time for the lesson "you shall be given." Of course that doesn't mean we don't plan but it was an interesting perspective to take on in regards to studying for the people we teach.

I'm still undergoing somewhat of a training process in regards to being an effective Zone Leader and also being productive in the area but I think things are becoming easier and I do have a better picture of what's expected of me.

Steve is doing well. He changed a bit after his Confirmation which has been one of my favorite parts about helping people through their conversion. he's much more open with his comments and the stuff he says is right on the ball. Next Sunday we're going to teach a lesson with him about Repentance in Gospel Principles. We're still trying to teach his son Justin who really has a lot of potential to join the church but we've had a lot of troubles in meeting with him. We were talking with Steve about it and he said "I don't think it's a question of 'if' he'll join but more of a question on 'when' he'll join," Good to know we have Steve on The Lord's side too.

This morning we went to the temple with another recent convert. he had been to the Temple before but this was the first time he brought his own names so it was really great. We had a lot of fun and we definitely felt the Spirit.

It snowed a lot and we shoveled a lot and we had lots of fun. Whenever we finsihed shoveling we would have a snow fight throwing snow at each other with the shovels and we would make a mess that we had to clean up again, but it was totally worth it.

Monday was the chinese new year and we have an elder we live with who is from Hong Kong so we had a celebration for him. One of the members provided all the stuff and we set it up at the church as a surprise for him. It was good

Wednesday, February 3, 2016

Steve was baptized. There was a lot that went down that I don't think I'd be able to convey very well over email but suffice it to say he was successfully baptized. We had a throwback to the last baptism I was a part of with Keegan, we had no hot water. It was extremely cold even though we spent two hours boiling water and carrying it into the font. I was able to baptize Steve and it was freezing! I told him to focus on the Spirit because that warms the heart. I don't think he felt the same way haha. Bishop confirmed him on Sunday and it was very Spiritual. In Gospel Principles Steve was bearing solid testimony of the need for a Restoration which is the first time he'd really stepped out of his shell and that was so good to see. It made me really happy to see his progress.

Our latest district picture

Last picture with Elder Corpus.

Life is going well. I'm not perfect but I keep chugging along and I feel quite content with that.

Tuesday, January 26, 2016

So I'm just going to write one story and it will be good and then I'll be done.

We have this less active lady with a nonmember husband who came to church for the Christmas service and it was great. We've been trying to set an appointment with her since then and it's never worked out. Well her home teacher is awesome and invited us to go with him to a lesson at her house. So we're there and she's talking all about health issues and surgeries and how she's recovering which is great. Well she mentioned that she was at the Massachusetts General Hospital which happens to be in the Boston first ward. I thought about it more and I realized that she had a really good chance of being there while I was serving there and I knew that we had only ever given one lady a blessing at that hospital and she also had a nonmember husband. So the home-teacher asks if we have anything we wanted to add so I said "this is weird but were you in the hospital during late May or June?" to which she says yes how did you know? and I responded with "because Im the one who gave you a blessing while you were there" to which all the dots started to connect and we had a joyous reunion. I was happy to see that things have gone well for her and thankfully we're best friends now. We've been having a hard time with establishing a good relationship with her but neither of us realized that we already had one so I think from now on things will go better there.

Also the assistants in the mission are finally getting there own area and it's the Boston first ward so I'm excited to go on exchanges there. :)